Claim: Big Oil Must Pay for Harvey and Irma

A new study claims that the contribution of big oil companies to hurricane intensity can be calculated with sufficient precision to determine how much fossil fuel companies should pay as compensation for storm damage.

Big Oil must pay for climate change. Now we can calculate how much

It is possible for scientific evidence to help apportion responsibility for climate damages among fossil fuel producers. Our paper shows how.

Peter C Frumhoff and Myles Allen
Friday 8 September 2017 00.00 AEST

As communities in coastal Texas and Louisiana confront the damage wrought by Hurricane Harvey, another hurricane, Irma, fueled by abnormally warm waters, is barreling into the Caribbean and threatening Puerto Rico and Florida.

We know that the costs of both hurricanes will be enormous and that climate change will have made them far larger than they would have been otherwise. How much larger? Careful studies will take time but the evidence that climate change is warming ocean waters, increasing both sea level and the risk of extreme precipitation in these regions is well established.

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Today, we and several colleagues are publishing a peer-reviewed paper in the journal Climatic Change that shows it is possible for scientific evidence to help apportion responsibility for climate damages among fossil fuel producers.

Using a simple, well-established climate model, our study for the first time quantifies the amount of sea level rise and increase in global surface temperatures that can be traced to the emissions from specific fossil fuel companies.

Strikingly, nearly 30% of the rise in global sea level between 1880 and 2010 resulted from emissions traced to the 90 largest carbon producers. Emissions traced to the 20 companies named in California communities’ lawsuits contributed 10% of global sea level rise over the same period. More than 6% of the rise in global sea level resulted from emissions traced to ExxonMobil, Chevron and BP, the three largest contributors.

We have the data needed to link the emissions traced to products sold by a fossil fuel company to a specific share of changes in temperature and sea level rise. Determining who should pay what for climate damages is a social and political question. But this kind of scientific work can help inform public and policy debate over the issue and potentially offers an approach that can help juries and judges to monetize damages in cases like the California communities’ lawsuits.

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It may take tens to hundreds of billions of dollars to support disaster relief and recovery among Gulf coast communities affected by Hurricane Harvey. ExxonMobil, Chevron and BP have collectively pledged only $2.75m.

As scientists further identify the role that climate change has made to exacerbating this tragedy, courts of law and public opinion should judge whether they are paying their fair share.

Peter C Frumhoff is the Director of Science and Policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Myles R Allen is Professor of Geosystem Science in the School of Geoography and the Environment, University of Oxford

Researchers have quantified the contributions of industrialized and developing nations’ historical emissions to global surface temperature rise. Recent findings that nearly two-thirds of total industrial CO2 and CH4 emissions can be traced to 90 major industrial carbon producers have drawn attention to their potential climate responsibilities. Here, we use a simple climate model to quantify the contribution of historical (1880–2010) and recent (1980–2010) emissions traced to these producers to the historical rise in global atmospheric CO2, surface temperature, and sea level. Emissions traced to these 90 carbon producers contributed ∼57% of the observed rise in atmospheric CO2, ∼42–50% of the rise in global mean surface temperature (GMST), and ∼26–32% of global sea level (GSL) rise over the historical period and ∼43% (atmospheric CO2), ∼29–35% (GMST), and ∼11–14% (GSL) since 1980 (based on best-estimate parameters and accounting for uncertainty arising from the lack of data on aerosol forcings traced to producers). Emissions traced to seven investor-owned and seven majority state-owned carbon producers were consistently among the top 20 largest individual company contributors to each global impact across both time periods. This study lays the groundwork for tracing emissions sourced from industrial carbon producers to specific climate impacts and furthers scientific and policy consideration of their historical responsibilities for climate change.

Back in the real world, even NOAA doesn’t think the alleged impact of anthropogenic CO2 on storm intensity is detectable. (h/t Benny Peiser)

… It is premature to conclude that human activities–and particularly greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming–have already had a detectable impact on Atlantic hurricane or global tropical cyclone activity. That said, human activities may have already caused changes that are not yet detectable due to the small magnitude of the changes or observational limitations, or are not yet confidently modeled (e.g., aerosol effects on regional climate). …

The Myles Allen study admits a joke size climate sensitivity range of 1.5C / doubling to 4.5C per doubling of atmospheric CO2, unknown impacts from a variety of factors such as aerosols, and a need for further study; an interesting set of admissions for scientists who provided the initial impression that they have a precise means of modelling anthropogenic damage to the climate on a per company basis.

How should oil companies and other fossil fuel businesses respond? What should be obvious to oil executives and shareholders is more needs to be done to publicly challenge scientifically suspect climate claims which threaten their businesses. If you try to appease your opponents, if you let their wild claims stand, it just encourages them.

Strikingly, nearly 30% of the rise in global sea level between 1880 and 2010 resulted from emissions traced to the 90 largest carbon producers. Emissions traced to the 20 companies named in California communities’ lawsuits contributed 10% of global sea level rise over the same period. More than 6% of the rise in global sea level resulted from emissions traced to ExxonMobil, Chevron and BP, the three largest contributors

Let’s take a look at their proposed responsibility (presuming that virtually ALL sea level rise since 1880 is caused by human induced carbon emissions).
Sea level has risen about 20cm (8 inches) since 1880 (137 years)
90 producers = 30% of the rise or 2.4 inches or around 1/4 inch average per producer.
20 companies named in California communities’ lawsuits = 10% of the rise or 0.8″ or around .04″ per company.
Exxon, Chevron and BP are responsible for 6% (average 2% each) of sea level rise or .48″ (.16″ (less than 1/6″) per company and less than 1/2″ total)
That is such a ridiculous amount of sea level rise that I am shocked I’m not drowning or treading water.
If it wasn’t for these NASTY 90 producers, Harvey would have dumped 1″ less rain and flooding would have been…THE SAME

I wonder if they will ever calculate what percent of the subsidence at various locations is due to governments building our system of dams and levees. Half to 2/3 of the sea-level rise in N.O. (according to a series of articles in the local newspaper a few years back) is due to subsidence. The other side of the equation, of course, is that people bought those fossil fuel products for heat and transportation, so should the consumers have to pay? And under the law, does one have to know one is doing damage to be held liable?

Continuing with the same logic, the oil companies should be CREDITED for the value of the fossil fuels used to mitigate the damage. That would include the difference in the amount of energy expended in the cleanup using bulldozers and trucks compared to the use of horses and oxen and even human muscle power. Oh yes, there are millions of other fossil fuel derived benefits, from the use of emergency evacuation helicopters which don’t run too well on battery power, to the fuel used to carry the President to Texas in A F 1 so that he can establish the funding for the cleanup.

The apparent number of more hurricanes recently is simply due to better detection of small ones which don’t approach land, and probably from more lax standards for Cat 1 hurricanes, as opposed to tropical storms.

For instance, 2005 is rated the busiest Atlantic hurricane season, and might well have been, with 15 storms rated as hurricanes. But 1933 probably had more than the 11 with which it is credited. However the counts of major hurricanes for the two seasons are probably comparable. The 1933 season had six major hurricanes, of which two were Cat 5, versus a tie record of seven major hurricanes for 2005, of which four have been rated Cat 5 (tied with 1961; when two Cat 5s).

Since catching peak winds while the storms are still out to sea was hit or miss then, the 1933 season might have had more Cat 5s.

Gloateus,
Your comments noted, but it suggests that the data, at least, is uncertain.
We have of course been told that the science is settled . . . . . . .

And 1933 is within the lifetimes of – well over a million Americans, all those over 85.
Indeed in 2010 85-94-year-olds numbered over five million – per the census. That is unlikely to have fallen in the seven years since.

it is not like it was in the later Upper Stone Age.

And yet we are being urged to rip up our entire economic system because of – wind.
[Not flatulence, although I think that also will be reduced when the extreme watermelons reduce the humans capable of flatulence to below 750 million. By having the rest of them die.]
Wind – or something.

What utter nonsense. This presupposes that CO2 causes climate change–not proven; that we can isolate a specific company’s impact–not possible.
Instead we should look at the $trillions spent on climate change and re-allocate current funding from climate change projects to disaster relief funds.

When will these charlatans dressed as scientist devolve to human sacrifice?
Oh wait! These charlatans are members of a community that has members openly discussing genocidal reductions in human life, and do so without condemnation from their community.
The formulas they use are nothing more than science sounding incantations.

“Strikingly, nearly 30% of the rise in global sea level between 1880 and 2010 resulted from emissions traced to the 90 largest carbon producers.”

And here I thought that it was the end-users of fossil fuel that converted it to CO2. Little did I know that the producers were holding most of it back and releasing it into the environment out of some perverted sense of evil.

Every gun manufacturer, bullet manufacturer, powder manufacturer is liable for every death where firearms are used, and every car manufacturer for deaths involving automobiles, etc.. The list becomes endless.
It is the end user that decides whether they want the product, and what they will do with it, and how they will use it.

You are so right. Tanking drains my account. Can I get my money back and some to cover the injuries they caused to the environment. Of course, the money shall be squeezed out from the present owners, as any good socialist knows.

It is not just the cars. It is not cars. It is everything people do. Everything. Try living without fossils. You just can’t do that. Or can, for a short time, but you’ll get soon hungry and later you’ll die because you didn’t have medicine.

Trying to fault that on oil companies is what we traditionally call ‘hate speech’.

Of course, the only money the oil companies have come from consumers , so this is a charge against consumers who drive cars. Therefore you are requiring auto drivers to pay reparations regardless of the fact that their only mode of transportation uses fuel provided by oil companies.
How about the pain and suffering caused by fraudulent global warming claims, such as these?. Let’s catalog the lies promulgated by the Union of Concerned Scientists (they claim there will be deadly disasters from nuclear accidents, kiling tens of thousands, for example, a claim they cannot possibly demonstrate has a significant probability of occurance).

… and ensure that all potential plaitiffs are included in the action. You only get one chance to sue. After that the oil companies are home free (except for the legislative whims and executive actions of future governments).

A testable implication of this theory is that the rate of warming should be related to the rate of emissions at the appropriate time scale. We propose here that the appropriate time scale is 30 years and compute detrended correlations of warming with emissions at time spans of 1850-2016, 1850-2013, 1880-2016, nd 1880-2013 for time series of the instrumental record and regional temperature reconstructions derived from the instrumental record. Twelve temperature time series are studied on a month by month basis. Six of the time series are regional reconstructions and six are measured station data (Figure 1). The global pattern shows lower rates of warming over ocean regions than over land regions and somewhat lower rates of warming for land in the Southern Hemisphere than for land in the Northern Hemisphere.

Detrended correlation analysis shows no evidence that warming is related to emissions at a generational time scale in regional temperature reconstructions for land areas in the Southern Hemisphere, ocean areas in either Hemisphere, and combined land and ocean regions in either hemisphere. The flatness of the warming curve and the complete absence of correlation with emissions for ocean areas ensures that when land and ocean areas are combined into hemispheric regions, no correlation survives (Figure 7).

Weak evidence of correlation with emissions is found for regional reconstruction of surface temperature for land areas of the Northern Hemisphere. Statistically significant correlations were found for 5 of 12 calendar months in the time span 1850-2016 and for 4 of 12 months in the time span 1880-2016. This result is likely to be anomalous because it is not supported by station data taken from the same region.

We conclude that the data – both in measured temperatures and in regional temperature reconstructions – do not show sufficient evidence that warming since the Industrial Revolution is driven by fossil fuel emissions or that warming can be attenuated by reducing emissions. The result is consistent with prior works that addressed similar research questions (Munshi, Generational fossil fuel emissions and generational warming, 2016) (Munshi, Limitations of the TCRE: Transient Climate Response to Cumulative Emissions , 2017) (Munshi, Long Term Temperature Trends in Daily Station Data: Australia, 2017) (Munshi, The Correlation between Emissions and Warming in the CET, 2017).

An interesting study, but it is based upon highly adjusted data. Even with that highly adjusted data, the correlation is very weak to non existent.

One needs to look at the raw unadjusted data. I suspect that would drive a nail in the coffin with a sledge hammer.

The authors of this study know that Big Oil won’t be the one paying damages. Even if they get Congress or the Courts to agree with their nonsense, it is the customers of Big Oil who will foot the bill in the form of higher prices. So if more poor people die because they can’t afford the higher energy prices, the authors of this study should be sued to pay the damages that can be attributed to them. What goes around comes around.

Big oil exists to meet the need of the consumers. Oil companies could just as easily be blamed for car accidents because the cars are fuelled by gasoline. As it is, big oil will fund the repair because it gives us the weath to do so.

Obviously whoever came up with this idea is not a lawyer, or even very intelligent. To collect damages you
have to prove responsibility. In this case who is responsible for the burning of gasoline and diesel fuel in our vehicles? You would have to go after the people who invented the gas powered car – over a hundred years ago. They are all long gone. Good luck collecting from them.
Oil companies neither invented gas powered cars, nor do they build them , nor do they sell them.

The oil companies have already started to donate many millions of dollars to the Houston area.. Perhaps the oil companies will get tired of the blame game and reply with napalm. ( A little sarcie, but not 97% )

Even if one believed this incredible stupidity for one second, there is the much, MUCH larger offset of positive economic activity which is the result of the use of fossil fuels. “Peer review”…..yeah, sure.

The gall of lawyers is unbounded. The more justified action would be to sue climate alarmists for the trillions of dollars wasted on unnecessary projects funded under the guise of the fake “fight” to stop global warming.

Yes exactly.
They can drone on about precisely approportioning blame for damages that are no different (actually far less lethal) than 100 years ago.
But these inept jokers are personally in frame for advocating policies to promote BigWind, BigSolar and BigBio.
Solutions that don’t really work to problems that don’t really exist.

Taking the “billing those responsible” thesis to its ultimate level, then perhaps

Angeles Duran, 49, from Vigo in Spain’s northwestern region of Galicia applied for ownership of the fiery star at the centre of our solar system …

Last week Miss Duran was issued with a document that declares she is “the owner of the Sun, a star of spectral type G2, located in the centre of the solar system, at an averaged distance from Earth of around 149,600,000 kilometres” (93 million miles).

There is often if not always substantial space weather when TCs form and grow. There were solar flares last weekend when Irma gathered her full fury. The link between solar weather and terrestrial weather is not yet confirmed and so is tenuous, still conservatively considered as “possible,” but it is on more solid ground than that of CO2 emissions. Hold the owner liable.

How can they claim that science that has had to switch sell even its basic name from global warming to climate change can be considered even probable proof when the law requires beyond reasonable doubt?
They have never even explained how without the global warming as well we could get man made climate change as the mechanism is supposed to be heat retention by the CO2 blanket.

Similarly, I have data to prove the misanthropogenic climate change alarm is responsible for 97% of the pain in my back. Following the logic of Peter C Frumhoff and Myles Allen, they should volunteer to finance the palliative care, including and not limit to the physiotherapist sessions for the rest of my life.

In Australian case law there is an event in Sydney, 1919, wherein person Mary Mahoney was said to have been paid to make a fabrication that a meat pie made by the reputable firm of Sargents, caterers, contained parts of a rat or mouse. Sargents claimed damages for loss of business from loss of good reputation.
Today, instead of Sargents the caterers, we have Exxon etc the oilies, we have the Union of concerned Scientists playing Mary with the phantom rat tail trying to damage the reputation of Exxon etc.
When, oh when, will the big oilies finally start to sue for reputation damage and consequent business losses of $$$? Only a few successful cases would be needed to bankrupt the Mary Mahonies? The evidence to secure a win every time seems hard to argue against. Geoff.

When I was in high school in the late 1960s I remember reading an article (in car and driver) about a chap that was driving a delivery van in Australia. He got into an accident and was thrown through the drivers window and died. Hi wife sued.

But the judge said had he put his seat belt on he would have survived so he dismissed the case.

The idea that you can somehow transfer responsibility and payment for any problem to some third party is a common theme today, yet, in this instance, those who use the products of the oil companies business will have to pay, this includes just about all of us. Fore or against modern life and the enormous benefits it has provided makes no difference, most if not all drive cars, depend on lorries to move goods, heat their houses, employ plastics etc. Stupidly attacking the companies whose endeavours produce the things which have made modern life possible is an unthinking malevolence that should it get out of hand will reduce life to collective pauperism. Be careful what you wish for.

The courts decided years ago that proportional damages meant fewer paydays for lawyers. Under modern standards, a client who is found to be 1% responsible for an accident can be forced to pay 100% of the damages, if their pockets are deep enough.

Maybe “Big Oil” should think about that proposition for at least one second.
That is of course after the rent seeking beneficiaries of government renewables subsidies have repaid the trillions they’ve stolen/gouged on the basis of the biggest hoax in the last two centuries.

Haven’t they been doing these studies for nearly 40 years, and still have not found convincing evidence.

The last IPCC Report accepted that it was not possible to establish a link between more extreme weather events and Climate Change.

This task is becoming ever more difficult because there has been no, or very minor warming these past 20 years. ENSO is presently neutral, but there are signs beginning to emerge that a La Nina may occur within the next 6 months.

Don’t forget that weather phenomena are atmospheric events where satellite data must be more pertinent, or they are driven by oceans where because the SST has not warmed Trenbeth and his ilk claim it is a travesty and that the energy/heat is hiding in the deep.

Richard, I have no intent to argue the IPCC’s position, or even the mainstream NASA/NOAA position. As a participant in the development of the NOAA/NASA (in that order) remote sensing systems used by our current generation of satellite systems I have no choice but to agree with you.

I don’t at all care for the recent changes made to those data and have difficulty believing the rationale for them. You can hide a truth forever, but I lie is soon discovered.

Surely big oil is responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs as well – a hitherto unknown effect of Quantum time tunneling physics requiring a vast amount of funding – please send cheques immediately.
To the person who asked what a typewriter is – it is a device once used by academics and others which gave sufficient time to reflect between the moment of thinking something and the physical action of writing it down.

Watching SKY news right now. Some bald fella is telling us that Atlantic hurricanes are becoming more frequent and stronger with an obvious upward trend since the 1970’s. He put up a couple of graphs in support but I did not recognize them nor did he say where they came from.

It looked to me to be totally incorrect. Then he extrapolated a straight line through to 2100 showing what looked to be a five fold increase so it is obviously propaganda.

Hey, maybe they are onto something here. How about suing Big Farm? I mean, think of all the environmental damage they do, with all the chemicals and fertilizers they use, much of which gets into the water at some point, raising nitrate levels, causing fish die-offs and other enviro-nightmares. Not to mention all the water they use, leading to lowered water tables. Then there’s all the dust they raise, and depletion of nutrients from the soils. The list goes on and on.
Ok farmers, pay up, you low-lifes.

Dr. Spencer has said that the Gulf is ALWAYS warm enough late summer to support a powerful storm. Harvey was weather.

‘Using a simple, well-established climate model, our study for the first time quantifies the amount of sea level rise and increase in global surface temperatures that can be traced to the emissions from specific fossil fuel companies.’

Then it should also be possible to compute drivers’, home heaters’, commercial and industrial fossil fuel users’ individual bills.

Positively true. If people want to go legal on this, then they best consider the concept of shared blame and their own contributing negligence in continuing to use the products that “big oil” produces.

So, you are going to buy your gas, run your furnace on high, fly to other countries in big planes, use all your cushy civilized products made by “big oil”, and then you are going to dismiss yourself from any blame in using “big oil”? I don’t think so. If you do any of these things, then you are complicit in the “damage” for which any legal remedy might seek a remedy.

So, what are you going to do? — sue “big oil”, get a class action settlement payment, and then use that to pay yourself for suing yourself for being negligent in using the products that you sued “big oil” for producing?

Doesn’t anyone wonder why, in spite of all the hype, posturing and publicity seeking, no one has yet to actually file a lawsuit on these claims? That is because lawsuits require evidence, allow for discovery of relevant documents, depositions and cross examination of witnesses and experts. The climate alarmist community has fought like hell to prevent open debate and to hide records and data. They are not going to risk their careers and reputations by revealing the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.